Excerpt from The Candidate: A Political Romance Moreover, both conventions had nominated dark horses, but the second nominee was the darker of the two. James Madison Grayson, affectionately called Jimmy Grayson by his neighbors and ad miters, was quite young, without a gray hair in his head, tall, powerfully built, smooth-shaven, and with honest eyes that gazed straight into yours. He was known as a brave man, with fine oratorical powers and a winning personality, but he had come to the convention merely as a delegate, and without any thought of securing the nomination for himself. Not a single vote had been instructed for him, but in that lay his Opportunity. All the conspicuous candidates were weak; good men in themselves, a solid political objection could be raised against every' one of them, and for a while the voting was scattered and desultory. Then Grayson began to attract at tention; as a delegate he had Spoken two or three times, always briefly, but with grace and to the point, and the people were glad both to see him and to hear him. At last a far-sighted old man from the same state knew that the moment had come when the convention. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.